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Richard Trager
Richard "Rick" Trager is an antagonist in Outlast. He is an insane Variant who experiments on patients in order to gain more knowledge about biology. Background Prior to his involuntary commitment, Trager was the head of Business Development at Mount Massive Asylum and an executive of Research Development for the Murkoff Corporation. Trager was also a close friend with Jeremy Blaire, as Waylon finds a document which proves that they were companions and used to golf together. Prior to the events of Outlast and Outlast: Whistleblower, mitigation officers Pauline Glick and Paul Marion are called in to investigate an HR complaint at Mount Massive. When the Pauls meet Trager, he is acting jovially, claiming to be "a team player" and wanting the two of them to be on "Team Rick". Rick also harasses the female investigator multiple times. Trager claims that no one in his department is responsible for the leaks. During the conversation, Marion secretly signals to Glick that he considers Trager to be "dirty as hobo shit". To get more information, Glick asks Trager whether the two of them could meet for dinner. Trager accepts. While dining at a restaurant, Trager explains that as a child his father tried to convince him not to become a doctor. Afterwards, Trager drives Pauline back to his place, where he offers her cocaine. When she declines, he offers her scotch, which she also declines in favor of red wine. While Trager is busy getting the wine from his cellar, Pauline searches his house and finds Trager's internet passwords, magazine guides on how to perform surgery, and a pamphlet for an abortion clinic. While drinking, Pauline recognizes a sour taste, and realizes that Trager spiked her drink with Rohypnol. Pauline responds by pulling her gun on Trager and points it at his genitals, forcing him to drink the rest of the drugged scotch. Trager passes out almost immediately. Pauline then calls Paul to pick her up from Trager's house. After leaving Trager's house, Pauline calls Paul, and the two confront pregnant Murkoff employee Michelle Haas as the source of the leaked information. Michelle reveals that Trager raped her and got her pregnant. Trager had then forced her to either get an abortion or to get fired. As she could tell no one without the risk of Trager firing her, and she could not take care of a child without her job, Michelle had decided to send the e-mail, with the hope that Trager would be blamed and fired. Paul then made sure a severance package was made for Michelle in exchange for her silence. This way, Michelle was able to keep her child and would be able to take care of it without working for Murkoff. Michelle agreed, but when she visited Jeremy Blaire with the investigators to revoke her security clearance, a furious Trager stormed into the room, calling the two investigators "lying bitches". Claiming that Michelle cannot prove anything, he grabbed a pair of scissors from a nearby table and viciously stabbed her in the stomach multiple times, severely wounding Michelle in the process. Paul then attacked Trager and took him to the ground. In the scuffle, Trager accidentally stabbed himself in the leg with scissors, and Pauline subsequently grabbed Trager by the neck and ran his head against a paper shredder, ripping out his long hair and scarring his scalp in the process. Afterward, Trager was apprehended and taken in as an inmate and used as a test subject for the Morphogenic Engine. Despite having been his friend, Blaire personally watched when Trager was dragged into the machine kicking and screaming, and smiled sadistically while watching. During the Mount Massive Asylum Incident, he improvised himself as a surgeon and started cutting up staff members to "cut corners". Characteristics Doctor Trager, much like the rest of the asylum's inhabitants, is a sadistic and mass-murdering psychopath, but his psyche and mental ability appears to operate in a highly functional way that proves he still has a grasp of reality, even if only slight. Because of this, he is more than capable of thinking, planning, and other things such as tricking Miles into entering the dumbwaiter so he can gain access to him (it's possible that that's how Trager lures his victims). Additionally, he is capable of both intelligent and coherent speech (much like Eddie Gluskin), speaking to Miles in a friendly tone and addressing him mockingly as "buddy." He either enjoys pretending to be a surgeon or has been driven to believe that he actually is one, and has a habit of collecting body parts from his "patients", e.g. a tongue because he was "tired of licking his own stamps", and Miles' ring and index fingers because he desired to sell them. Story ''Outlast'' After Miles hears a voice and climbs into the dumbwaiter to escape his pursuers, he meets Trager. Despite initially sounding like an ally, Trager beats Miles until he is unable to walk, picks him up, and straps him into a wheelchair. After rolling him down a hallway, Trager taunts Miles by offering him a chance to escape the asylum by walking out the exit door. Miles is unable to do so due to the wheelchair restraints, so Trager pretends that Miles wants to stay, taking him up an elevator and down a few more hallways. Along the way, Miles sees the bodies of other victims who had been captured. They finally arrive at a makeshift operating room; a bathroom covered in gore with a table that has various sharp tools on it. Trager takes the camcorder and sets it down on the sink before washing his hands. He then has a short talk with Miles about Father Martin and his religious viewpoints before taking a large pair of bone shears and cutting off two of Miles' fingers. Trager leaves the room for a short while, giving Miles the chance to escape. Miles breaks out of the wheelchair restraints and navigates through other "operating rooms" where a patient talks to him and reveals that he is an executive like Trager. The patient then starts to shout Trager's name and he finally appears to investigate. Trager kills the patient before going back to the operating room to check on Miles, which reveals that he has escaped his confines. Enraged, Trager then scours the place to find Miles. After Miles retrieves the key and uses it to start the manually-operated elevator, Trager breaks into it from the floor below in an attempt to get to Miles, but Miles struggles and pushes him out. Trager's upper torso is still inside the elevator as it begins to move, and he is crushed to death in the process. Miles then escapes through a hatch in the elevator ceiling. ''Outlast: Whistleblower'' While Waylon passes through the Male Ward, Trager can be seen lying dead on the ground after Murkoff's Tactical Division had pulled out his body from the elevator shaft, who they mistake for one of the asylum's victims after seeing his body. Personality Trager is a very upbeat and friendly man, always cracking jokes and never losing his composure. However, this masks his true persona: a sadistic murderous psychopath who takes great delight in torturing virtually anyone he comes across. His insane mutterings and notes reveal he is obsessed with making money, believing the only thing that really matters is making profit, and has a demented fascination with biology. He soothes both of these obsessions with his torturous occupation, learning about biology by cutting up his victims and gaining money by selling the severed parts. While he seems to maintain his polite and upper-class personality even when torturing Miles, he mentally breaks upon discovering Miles' escape, screaming profanity filled rants and yelling that he cannot stand "quitters". Physical description Prior to his commitment into the asylum, Trager was a slim man with long, curly hair who frequently wore a pink dress shirt with his collar popped and his sleeves rolled up just below his elbow, tucked into tan slacks, a black belt, matching shoes and a dark blue sweater tied around the neck, along with an analog watch on his right wrist. Following the skirmish with Murkoff's two agents, Richard's hair was caught in a paper shredder and ripped out, leaving him with only a few strands and a scarred scalp. After being subjected to the Morphogenic Engine, Trager was drastically disfigured; he became very withered and boney with numerous scars running down his body. The left side of his lower lip has been torn off, leaving him with a slight lisp. During the Mount Massive Asylum Incident, he fashioned himself as a surgeon, donning a blood-stained apron around the front part of his legs, which was just dark green patient sheets, with a tattered surgeon mask, steampunk-esque monocles with a shattered right lens and a patient drip wrapped around his left arm that punctures his veins. Trivia *The last name 'Trager' may be a reference to the Trager approach. *Richard's email address is r.trager@murkoffcorp.lu, as revealed in a document that Miles can acquire. *It is possible to stop Trager from murdering the Variant by distracting him. If done so, Trager will chase Miles instead of impaling the patient with his shears, however, this will prevent the player from acquiring the "Dr. Rick Trager" note. *Trager's walking animation is bugged, causing him to move faster than his legs should carry him. This makes him appear to float as he walks throughout the Male Ward. *There's a bug in which Trager will not appear to see Miles if the player activates a checkpoint, and returns to where Trager is. *In the game's configuration and on the soundtrack, Richard is referred to as "Surgeon". *It's implied that after mutilating his fingers, Trager would have gone for Miles' genitals and then his tongue, had he not escaped. *While everything he says is clearly filtered through a fractured mind, Trager's talk about how money has evolved from something solid, like the gold standard, to "an article of faith" does reflect the current state of modern economics. His talk of "turning the consumer into the means of production" is also a concise resume of Rudolf Wernicke's research, which alters the cells of the human body into becoming nanite factories. *In Temple Gate Town Square, Richard Trager's torture methods, "Fingers First. Then Balls. Then Tongue", can be found written on one of the basement walls as an Easter Egg. *Trager's voice actor, Alex Ivanovici, was nominated for the "Outstanding Performance in a Video Game" at the 2015 ACTRA Montreal awards for his performance in Outlast. References Navigation es:Richard Trager ru:Ричард Трагер fr:Richard Trager Category:Characters Category:Outlast characters Category:Outlast: Whistleblower characters Category:Murkoff Account Characters Category:Deceased characters